By hook and by crook It’s not clear sometines whether the beleaguered 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) is as dead as a Norwegian Blue or just resting. The Act, explains Democracy Docket, was not just intended to address open discrimination, but the subtle kind as well, as Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in 1969. Chief Justice John Roberts will go down in history for eviscerating and/or weakening VRA provisions. Even then, The VRA is not quite dead yet: Over the past few months, pro-voting forces have brought a series of lawsuits under lesser known and rarely litigated provisions of the VRA that seek to combat some of the more “subtle” — but nevertheless pernicious — voting laws that disenfranchise citizens across the country. From Washington to North Carolina and other states in between, these lawsuits are tapping into more obscure portions of the VRA in order to protect voting rights. You go to war with the VRA provisions you have. Case coordinator Rachel Selzer names a few: In Wisconsin, a new lawsuit challenges the state’s absentee ballot witness requirement under Section 201 of the VRA. A recent federal lawsuit brought on behalf of four individual Wisconsin voters alleges that the state’s absentee ballot witness requirement contravenes Section 201 of the VRA, which prohibits denying the right to vote on the basis of a citizen’s failure to comply with a “test or device.” Section 201 defines an unlawful “test or device” as any requirement that a voter must satisfy as a prerequisite for voting. Including “the voucher of registered voters or members…